Low Down in Your Garden
By Spencer Shaw
When it comes to re-establishing native vegetation we tendto concentrate on the planting of trees and shrubs and if we’re lucky maybe afew Lomandra. But to truly re-establish a diverse ecosystem we must help establishall the groundcovers too such as grasses, herbs, small shrubs and ferns.Groundcover plants are crucial in providing a safe home for ground basedanimals such as skinks, frogs, snakes, bush rats, antechinus and of course awhole host of insects (don’t say yuk, think of them as Bird Food!) Groundcoverplants are also crucial in providing the food resources such as seed, fruit,leaf and tubers to everything from birds, butterflies and beetles right throughto wallabies and kangaroos(if you’ve got a really backyard). Groundcover plantings can be very rewardingfor you if you love your native fauna because they can be very rich in theresources they provide and in effect act like a magnet for native fauna in yourarea!
Planting native groundcovers in your own backyard (as wellas trees and shrubs) is often even easier than in a big revegetation projects becausethe small plants are vulnerable to weed competition and your input with mulchand weeding can be vital in establishing native groundcovers. Control of groundcover weeds is crucial whileestablishing native groundcovers, for example lawn grasses such as couch,carpet grass and kikuyu need to be eliminated and subject to ongoing controlthrough blanket mulching and or weeding. Once well established though, nativegroundcovers can outcompete and shade out the weeds.
The great thing about many groundcovers is that they are easy to grow yourself by either directly transplanting around your garden or establishing in pots to plant later. Plants such as Native Plumbago ( Plumbago zeylanica), Native Violets (Viola banksii), Pennyroyal (Mentha sp.), Creeping Beard Grass (Oplismenus spp.) and Pollia (Pollia crispata) are just a few of our local native groundcovers that you can propagate easily through cuttings & runners. Native Grasses such as Kangaroo Grass (Themeda triandra), Barbed Wire Grass (Cymbopogon refractus), Native Sorghum (Sarga leiocladum) and Poa (Poa labilardieri) are easy to grow from seed or transplant as seedlings. All the plants listed above are available through Forest Heart ecoNursery.
Our place is buzzing (or should that be tweeting) with a hugediversity of small birds at the moment including Red Brow Finch, New HollandHoney Eater, Golden Whistler, Red Backed fairy Wren, Lewin’s Honey Eater, Whip Birds and many more. None ofour plantings are much older than 11 years but the denseplantings of groundcovers and low shrubs near the house provide home and foodfor these little critters and so many more.